Happy New Year!

Happy New Decade! Since we didn't do anything special for New Year's, I'll just let Grace wish you a Happy New Years and simultaneously show off her Christmas hat. So far no firecrackers have woken Archie so I'm hoping our luck holds out for the night. Still have 1.5 hours till midnight!

Christmas Morning 2009!

Christmas pics are better late than never, right?

This was the first year Archie really got the idea behind Christmas even a little and it was really fun to see his first reaction to the tree with presents.

He needed some help from Daddy with opening in the beginning...

...But was up for trying on his own after awhile

I'm a really bad Christmas shopper. Really bad. Hunter and I had a conversation about a week before Christmas that went like this.
Hunt: "Did you get me anything this year" (I didn't last year and he's playfully reminded me several times.)
Me: "Not yet, but I will. I know exactly what, too, whenever I have a chance to go to town."
Hunt: "Actually, I haven't gotten you anything either. Do you want anything because if you don't we could skip presents this year."
Me: "Ok. That sounds easier if you're sure you won't mind."
(However, after neglecting presents totally last year, I surprised him with a wallet and he bought me a calendar.)

I did manage to get two little books for Archie. It eased my conscience that he loved his book about cars as much as I thought he would. It's bilingual and the English is really bad. For example, "Antique car" is "antiqu car". (Don't worry about him too much - Grandparents definitely spoiled him.)

Grace seemed to prefer sleeping to present opening. When she finally got up around breakfast time, she seemed to be pretty surprised by the colorful box. (I think her expression is hilarious.)

Thanks to the DeJs for an I-touch!

I thought this pic was funny. Archie stayed up super late on Christmas Eve with some guests so he actually slept in this vest. It wouldn't have mattered even if I'd put his Christmas PJ's on because he wouldn't have worn them for pics anyway. The first thing he says in the morning is "Jammies off."

Happy five month day, Grace!

I can't believe another "month day" has rolled around. My little baby is now five months old! I let Archie hold her solo for the first time today (with me standing in front of them just in case). He did an admirable job, and they both seemed to really enjoy it.

Grace weighs around 14 pounds. She's eating cereal mixed with soy formula about three times a day along with nursing. She has a right good appetite for such a petite little princess. She's still not rolling over, but I think that's because all the layers of clothes get in the way. She gets so happy when we take a few off and let her swing her legs around. We're trying unswaddled sleeping for the first time tonight to see if a five month old is responsible enough with such great freedom to actually get some sleep and not just play!

Merry Christmas!

Archie was a good boy this year. Santa made a special appearance at our house on Christmas Eve while en route to deliver presents to all the good boys and girls. Archie was very happy! He was a little disappointed this morning, though, when we told him to come and see what Santa had brought. He was hoping Santa himself had come back!!!


A little too much Santa!

Happy Anniversary!

December 20, 2006
Six Years Earlier: December 20, 2003

Hard to believe it's been six wonderful years! I love you, Hunt!

Staying warm is the name of the game!

We've gotten pretty good at keeping Grace (and ourselves) warm. Archie is a blur of constant motion so he doesn't have too much chance to get cold. We wear layers of sweaters or coats. And, well...I'm not expecting Grace to roll over until we go on vacation to Hong Kong in January and she can shed some of her excess layers. Her wonderful Daddy came up with the idea of heating up a room with our heater after bath so the clothes changing process doesn't chill her. I love watching Daddy cuddle her to keep her warm, too!

Snug as a bug in a rug!

Winter Grace, Summer Grace

Despite the cold, diaper pics can still be safely made in our house if we warm up the room good first with our electric heater, but the pics below are more in line of what she needs to be wearing.

Ha Ha Ha!

There's nothing like the sweet laughs of a four month old!

Introducing: Nai Nai

Meet Nai Nai, our house helper. This post is long overdue. This wonderful woman has been one of the biggest blessings in our life since Grace joined our family. She cooks, cleans, and does laundry while returning to us at least a third of her salary back in saved grocery costs. But, the greatest thing she does is simply be wonderful with our children. Archie loves her and goes running for the door on days she comes (Mon, Wed and Fri). I think she's the reason his Chinese is currently better than his English. (Oops, we'll work on that.) We even considered having her move in with us at one point. I finding myself more and more often hiring her for an extra day here and there just because the extra pair of hands in the house makes my life so much easier and less stressful. My language sessions with my teacher are so much more productive when I'm not simultaneously taking care of two kids, but that's just one small example.

Thank you, Nai Nai! We love you!

(Nai Nai means grandmother. It is normal for children to refer to all older adults by this term. We call her Ayi or aunt.)

Spolied!

Who is spoiled? At least three people in the DeJ household. Mommy and Daddy were spoiled to having a 2 month old sleeping through the night and really wish you would do it again!

Actually, Grace has been doing better the past week or so since we figured out she wasn't getting enough milk. However, we got the midnight wake up last night. Grace is a wee bit spoiled to kisses, cuddles and being held by our wonderful house helper. However, since the wake-ups started, we've tightened up on her schedule a lot, and I'm pretty confident it's the hunger not the cuddles affecting her night time performances. Thankfully, the doctor says her growth is on target and isn't worried. And, her daytime temperament has reverted back to her normal, happy, easygoing self since the rice cereal started coming. Last night, she didn't seem to want that much but I have learned one thing. Make sure she's good and stuffed before bed!

We love you, Gracie Girl, and Mommy doesn't mind buying you the special soy formula until you can start tolerating lactose.

What do you freeze in your freezing room?

What do you freeze in your freezing room? I freeze dirty diapers. Huh? First, what is a freezing room anyway? Think of a freezing room like your freezer. But, it's actually a small closet powered by the frigid temps outside. No electricity required. (The only downside is in summer it's more of a baking room.) They're common where we live. In the pic below you can see all the junk we store in ours. (It's our only real closet.) You can also see some lumps of dough that will be steamed bread soon (beside stroller handle). We have also taken to freezing our dirty diapers out there until their nightly wash. It is a great technique for odor control. HAHA! (They're in the box, but I purposely took the pic so you couldn't see them.)

This pic doesn't have anything to do with our freezing room. (Children are not allowed in it.) This pic is to celebrate Archie's "month-day" as I like to call it. He's 27 months old today and getting more grown up looking all the time.

Hats

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all! I'm starting to really get in the Christmas spirit. Maybe it's all the music Hunt's been playing on the computer. Maybe it's both my kids decked out in their Christmas clothes. Or, maybe it's all the snow outside, which is a great excuse for drinking hot chocolate. Yesterday, we got out Archie's Nativity set. Getting my A Charlie Brown Christmas materials together in Power Point form for an English Corner tonight helped, too.

As usual, Grace has more pictures than anyone else! She's just too cute decked out in Christmas stuff.

Merry Christmas to you! Remember to celebrate the Reason for the Season!

Pre-Christmas Presents

Me-maw and Papa sent us a box of Christmas presents today! This one was labeled "to be opened before Christmas." Archie had fun. (Inside were some Christmas stockings for him and Grace.)

Archie still loves shoes. He's a ways off from a foot as big as Daddy's, though.

Cuddles and Cries

I wanted to upload a cute video of Grace's first cereal today, but the computer was too slow and I gave up. I thought I'd show off some of her pics with this cuddly bear. They were outtakes from the session, but I kind of like them anyway :)

With such a cuddly, furry friend, what's the crying coming from? We think it might be coming from hunger. We think we might have started the cereal just in time because we think she's not getting enough milk from me now. We had this problem with Archie at seven months, and it worked itself out in a week or so, but this has been going on for 2.5 weeks now. It was easy to disregard the first week, but we really started thinking through options by Week 2 of mid-night wake-ups. Yesterday, we came to the dreaded conclusion: the wake-ups aren't from cold, teething, or poor scheduling, they're from lack of milk. Thankfully, we're able to mix her rice with soy formula - she, like her brother - want nothing to do with milk based ones, and hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this soon and keep nursing for awhile.

We also realized that our diet these days consists of fried bread and soy milk (breakfast) and rice, vegetables, tofu and occasionally eggs (lunch and dinner) with some yogurt and fruit snacks. I am going to try to eat more meat and yogurt and see if that helps.

Frozen fingers warmed by soy milk

Winter is so cold here, I can't help but have a lot of random musings every time I go outside. Well, make that inside, too, as our apartment heat isn't working very well this year and we stay bundled in layers in our house and often huddle by our electric heater.

I've taken by stopping by the street stand for a nice cup of fresh hot soy milk whenever I take Archie to the park to keep my fingers from freezing. That's what you drink in cold weather, too, right? I mean, hot chocolate is really overrated.

With a corn cob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal. Carrot noses work, too. But what about a tomato? My first time seeing a snowman with a nose like this!

Archie still has a blast playing outside even if he is the only kid whose mother lets him venture out in such weather.

Babies were made for warm soft beds, blankets, and kisses and cuddles - not for the arctic tundra. This is ONE of the snow layers Grace wears when she does venture out for brief periods of time on our way to an activity.

Crazy English - studio blunders

Anything wrong with this pic? The whole Brown Eyes thing jumped out at me right away! (Don't her eyes look a little blue to you?) The rule for my free photo shoot was I only had input on the photos going into my album and not the display album. That seemed quite reasonable to me, but I knew I would be in for some pretty major English blunders. Since they gave me JPEG's and not the Photoshop files of the page layouts, taking out words and redoing them was rather complex. I think fixing the English on the first three spreads is beyond me so I'll just enjoy what they put.

The original English on this file was "I with the story of small bear" I wanted to fit most of the existing bubbles to minimize editing so I changed it to "Your smile makes my heart sing"

The cover to the display album:

The English translation of their name is "The Son of the Sun"

Here are a few more favorites:


What were some of the other blunders? How about "Rumor is cherished more" on one spread that I replaced with "Sugar and spice and everything nice", "I hope everything all be fine" which I replaced with "Faith is the evidence of things hoped for" and a bunch of garbled gibberish I replaced simply with "Grace".

Pass the rice, please!

Well, actually Grace was really saying "Please DON'T pass the rice" tonight, but it was a milestone nonetheless. When we started with Archie he was delighted to have something other than milk and reached out his mouth like a little bird waiting for the mother bird to drop in the worm. Grace was a little less enthusiastic but took a few bites anyway (after much spitting out). She's starting to wake up really early in the mornings for a 4:30-5:00 a.m. feed so we're thinking she needs a little more in her belly. I'm hoping she'll take more soon because I'm spoiled to a sleeping-through-the-night baby.


Hunt made this picture before the feeding process started. He's proud of it, and I like it, too.